Chapter 12
TWELVE
The sun rises over the trees and birds peck through the seed in the feeders.
Years ago, Paige insisted we feed the birds.
We added a shepherd’s hook and then another, and then another.
Next came the bird bath, followed by the fountain, which lead into a whole babbling brook being installed in our backyard.
Paige no longer feeds the birds. Josie does or I will when I’m home.
Today, it falls on me because my wife had to rudely leave before the sun even rose, to go work on a wedding arrangement.
The groom called in a last-minute change and instead of my wife saying no, she bent and told him no problem.
I must suck as a groom because I don’t remember a single flower at our wedding.
I only remember my bride and how she looked coming down the aisle. She was fucking gorgeous.
Still is.
Paige comes outside, with a granola bar in her hand, telling me she’s leaving for school. “Mack’s taking me this morning.”
I groan but nod. He’s a good kid and he’s someone I would do anything for. I just wish they weren’t dating.
“Doesn’t he have practice?”
“Not until later,” she says. “Elle and Ben are due back today, so he’ll go to grandpa’s to get Beau and then to Noah’s for Stevie Nicks.” Grandpa being Mason’s dad, Michael. He’s another man who should’ve kicked me out of his life, but didn’t, and I should make sure he doesn’t need anything.
Mack has been walking Beau since he was a puppy, and it was only natural that he did the same with Stevie Nicks when Noah and Peyton moved to town. During Mack’s seasons, he generally walks the dogs in the morning.
“All right. I’ll see you at the studio later?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she says. “After the weekend, there’s bound to be a lot of drama people need to unpack to a complete stranger.”
I stare at her for a moment. Those words sting. Finally, I shake my head. “Remember who pays your bills.”
Paige laughs. “Don’t worry. I won’t.” She kisses me on my cheek. “Bye, Daddy. Have a good day.”
“You too.”
My mother is sitting at the island with her coffee when I come in. She looks at me, smiles, and goes back to reading the newspaper, which isn’t something we get delivered.
“Where’d that come from?”
“Mack brought it for me. He’s such a good boy.”
“He is.”
“They’re in love, ya know.”
I know but refuse to acknowledge it. I fill my mug and turn to look at her. “I was in love when I was Mack and Paige’s age.”
Her hand stills. I know what I’ve said has upset her. It was a low blow.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re right. You were in love and your father and I didn’t support you.” She closes the paper and looks at me. “Worse, we kept your son from knowing who his family is. Those are moments in my life that I can’t get back and will continue to regret.”
“In your defense—”
“In my defense, I was a drunk. I allowed a man to manipulate and control me. What I thought was love, was abuse. That abuse transferred to you. I lived in fear. Watching you walk out, seeing Josie at the door and in the supermarket with Noah—that was the catalyst for change. The day you returned for Mason’s funeral, was the day I knew I had to change or I was going to die a bitter old woman. ”
“Thank you . . . for changing.”
“Short of giving birth to you, it’s been the best damn decision of my life.
Well, you accepting me into your life is up there as well.
Because of you, I have friends in Michael and Tess, a beautiful family, and I’m a great grandma.
I wasn’t the best mother, but you can be damn sure, I’m going to be the best grandma I can be. ”
I sniff hard and turn away to clear my throat. We’re quiet for a long moment.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
I fill my mug even though it doesn’t need it and then do the same for her. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“I heard the caller,” she says, not elaborating on which one.
“I can’t shake him, which is stupid because . . . I don’t know.” I sigh heavily. “It was probably Nick anyway. He made a comment at the bar the other day about it.”
“But?”
“But it wasn’t Nick. This man sounded older and he mentioned his son.
Said he wasn’t the father his kid needed.
Told himself he was doing his best, and the truth was he didn’t try very hard, and by the time he figured that out the boy was grown and gone, and he didn’t know if he had any right to come knocking.
“I told him it’s never too late to try. Told him reaching out isn’t about easing his own guilt, it’s about handing his son the choice he never got.
Show up. Tell the truth. Don’t reach for a single excuse.
Then be man enough to take a no, if no is what comes back.
” I shake my head. “Good advice. I’d stand behind every word of it.
It’s just been stuck in me ever since and I couldn’t tell you why.
Something about the voice. I knew it and I didn’t. Couldn’t put a face on it.”
When I finally look at my mom, her hands flat on the island countertop. Her expression is blank and her eyes are distant.
“Mom.”
“Say the rest of it?”
“How he talked?”
She nods.
I think of how to describe what I remember. “Slow. Careful. Like he had to think about each word before he said it or like the words were being dragged from him.”
“That’s your father.” Her words punch me in the gut. There’s no way he would call. The last time we spoke, I found him in the grocery store, cowering over Peyton. I wanted to strangle him.
“Nah.”
“Answer me this. Did he stop before he got to the word son?”
“…Yeah.” I go cold. “No,” I say.
“Liam.”
“No. There’s a thousand sorry old men in this state who—”
“You already know this in your heart. The voice was familiar because you know it you just don’t want to believe he’d have the gall to call you and say something like this for the world to hear.”
She stands, comes to me and puts her hand over mine. Hers is shaking, a little. That’s how I know she’s already sure. “That was your father. That was Sterling, on your show, asking a room full of strangers how to get back to you. And you’re the one who told him how.”
I don’t say anything. There’s a sound in my ears that isn’t coming from the room.
I’ve pictured a lot of ways my father might turn back up after all this time. A letter from a lawyer. An obituary. I never once pictured this one. Yet, I put myself out there, opened myself up for him to do this.
“He doesn’t get to do that,” I say, and it comes out lower than I mean it to.
“He doesn’t get to be the sad old man on the radio.
He doesn’t get to be a thing people feel sorry for.
He had a wife and a kid and a whole life and he ground every one of us down because we weren’t the sheep he expected us to be, and now what. He’s tired? He’s scared?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one I’ve got. I haven’t spoken to him since I signed the divorce papers. I left. Him. Beaumont. If the triplets didn’t live here, neither would I. My Paige loves Los Angeles. She loves my childhood home.”
My mom’s right. Paige, even Josie, loved the house in Los Angeles.
I can still feel the flat of his hand between my shoulder blades. Funny what sticks. Not the yelling—there was never much yelling—he didn’t need it. The hand. Steering me into a room and out of one, away from Josie and onto a field, always where he wanted me to be.
My mother spent the best part of her life as a piece of furniture in that man’s house.
He told her where to stand and what she was feeling.
He told her, once, that her own mother was dead before it was true, and let her grieve a living woman across the country, because a wife who’s mourning is easier to keep than a wife who might pack a bag.
I’ve known all of it for years. It’s why there isn’t a soft feeling left in me for him, and why I never expect there to be.
“I’m not going to tell you to call him,” she says. “I’d be the last mother on earth that should. He took my mother from me with one sentence and I never got those years back and I never will. You want to let him talk to your voicemail till the day he dies, you’ve got my blessing.”
“But.” Because there’s a but. There’s always a but with her now. Getting sober made her honest, and honest is a pain in my ass.
“But the Sterling I lived with never once asked for a thing he could take instead.” She holds my eyes.
“Not from me, not from you, not from God. And the man you just described got down on his knees in front of strangers because he couldn’t find the nerve to do it in front of you.
I don’t know what that is. I know it isn’t nothing.
A man like your father doesn’t crawl unless something’s run out on him. ”
Something’s run out on him. I sit with that, and I don’t like where it leads.
“So what do I do,” I say. It comes out smaller than I’d like.
“Nothing.” She kisses the top of my head like I’m eight years old. “Today you drink your coffee with me, and you let it be. It’s taken him thirty years to reach out. He can sit on your timing for once in his life. Don’t dwell, Liam. You don’t owe him anything. No one does.”
My mom cleans her mug. “I’m off to spend the morning with my grandbabies.”
She leaves me in the kitchen with all of this weighing on my shoulders. Bex is doing her part, she’s screening callers, but she doesn’t know Sterling from the next guy. And maybe it’s not Sterling. Maybe I’m grasping because I’m at this crossroads where I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.
The house is quiet, too quiet. It gives my mind a clear space to think about what I don’t want to think about. I miss Harrison and JD. I miss our jam sessions, even if they turn into gripes about aches and pains.
Out the front window its an ordinary day, a recycling truck picks up at our curb, our neighbor is backing out of their driveway, another neighbor running by and waving even though I doubt they can see me.
My community—a place that I love being—going on about their business while I reel from what could be the most unsettling realization that Sterling may have tried to reach out.
Over the air is cowardly. Saying those things so listeners can feel sorry for him is cheap. He doesn’t deserve forgiveness or pity from people on the other end, people with their own issues.
I don’t know what I can do to keep him off air. It’s something I’ll have to talk to Bex about. Sterling could lie—he would lie—to get what he wants. He always has. He doesn’t let something stand in his way, if it’s something he wants.